Blog #4: "Mexico Aims To Save Babies and Moms with Modern Midwifery"

Mexico Aims to save babies and moms with modern midwifery.  Today in Mexico, majority of babies are born in hospitals.  Hospitals in Mexico are still struggling with large numbers of maternal deaths.  Mexico is making plans in bringing back centuries-old tradition of midwifery.  “Hospitals are oversaturated, and so it’s a big problem,” said Guadalupe Mainero, director of Guerro’s new midwifery school.  She also states that doctors are overwhelmed with normal births and then in return not able to apply more time to mothers with high-risk births.  This is dangerous to mothers in labor.  The nearest hospital is usually about 30 minutes away.  If there is need of an emergency, Mexico’s rugged dirt roads make it extremely difficult to get there.  With less focus on these mothers who are of high-risk pregnancies, there is a need for change.  This change is where the midwifery school could help.  The new schools are training the students to learn the old arts, like massaging bellies with long shawls, while also studying gynecology, obstetrics and basic nursing.  When they graduate in four years, they will be license and able to work in urban hospitals and rural clinics.

With a poverty stricken area as large as a country such as Mexico, it is difficult to have the availability of modern medicine and health care clinics to be provided.  This is a scarce resource to these mothers who are soon to deliver their babies.  It is even more difficult for mothers who are in need to be medically treated if they are “high-risk pregnancies”.  Their transportation routes are also difficult with the lack of decent roads to get to the hospitals.  I think that Mexico educating more students and then allowing them to turning around and help pregnant civilians, this will decrease the numbers of maternal deaths.

Jacqueline Wooten

SOC 202-01  2/22/2013 1:23 PM

hhttp://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/06/168629259/mexico-aims-to-save-babies-and-moms-with-modern-midwifery